U.N. Envoy Triggers a Debate in Colombia

Colombia's biggest rebel group says it is fighting on behalf of the poor for "a new Colombia." Authorities say they're just drug-trafficking bandits who kill innocent civilians.

So when U.N. special envoy James LeMoyne told a newspaper over the weekend he believes some of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, rebels are ideologically committed, he touched off a storm of controversy.

Defense Minister Martha Lucia Ramirez accused LeMoyne of "defending the interests of terrorists." Shocked business leaders accused LeMoyne of being out of touch with reality.

"What is certain is that (the guerrillas) are destroying the nation … and we must end the debate," Eugenio Marulanda, head of the National Confederation of Chambers of Commerce, said Tuesday. "We are tired of hearing Mr. LeMoyne, who says many things that are true and other things that don't correspond with reality."

LeMoyne, in unusually blunt comments to two Colombian newspapers, suggested the upper classes are not making enough sacrifices in Colombia's war, now in its 39th year. Most of the government soldiers fighting in the jungles and mountains of this South American country are the children of the poor.

"I have two questions for the upper class of this country to respond to," LeMoyne told the newspaper El Tiempo. "First: Are your sons, nephews or grandsons in the army? … Who makes the sacrifices in this country when there is combat?"

LeMoyne also asked if the rich pay enough taxes, to better distribute the wealth in a country where 64 percent of its 44 million people live in poverty. He asserted that it is "a mistake to think that the FARC members are only drug traffickers and terrorists."

Those comments outraged many in government. Ramirez, the defense minister, noted that the rebels execute hostages _ including a state governor, a former defense minister and eight captive soldiers who were killed on May 5 as the army tried to rescue them.

"What ideological commitment can justify a massacre of that nature?" Ramirez asked.

Polls regularly show little support for the rebels among Colombians.

Seeking to calm the storm, LeMoyne's office released a statement Tuesday night saying "the United Nations has never defended terrorism and in no way seeks to justify violence of any armed group."

The statement said any future U.N. effort to facilitate peace talks "requires an attempt to understand those involved in the conflict in order to deal with them, and reach a negotiated solution."

The FARC, believed to number 16,000, emerged in the early 1960s as peasants clamored for land reform. But the FARC later began kidnapping for ransom. Then, in the 1990s, they got heavily involved in drug trafficking after the demise of the Medellin and Cali cocaine cartels.

"They've made major political mistakes in getting involved in so many abuses of human rights and illegal activities over the last decade," said Michael Stanfield, a history professor at the University of San Francisco. "There is a major contradiction in pursuing such activities that do essentially target the people they are presumably trying to help."

U.S. Army Gen. James Hill, commander of U.S. military operations in Latin America, wrote The Miami Herald earlier this year to say that Colombian rebels and their paramilitary foes don't fight for ideological reasons.

"The illegal armed groups … terrorize Colombia's population, not for ideals, but for profit," Hill said.

LeMoyne, who declined to speak with The Associated Press, helped arrange peace talks between the FARC and the Colombian government in a safe haven in southern Colombia until the talks collapsed in February 2002.

His role could be critical in any future attempts at peace talks.

President Alvaro Uribe, a hard-liner, has asked the United Nations to mediate peace talks with the FARC if the rebels first agree to a cease-fire. The FARC, for its part, has said it doesn't want the United Nations to mediate.

LeMoyne has said he would be willing to arrange talks again. He told the Espectador newspaper he would head back into the jungle to meet with the rebels, if they seek an encounter with him.

"If that happens, I will pack my hammock and my mosquito netting," he said.